Spark
by kismet00
Summary: After a plane with faulty brains and a faulty skin exploded in midair over the Pacific Ocean, Makoto was left to fend for herself and discover what the world really looks like. And from what she’s seen, it doesn’t look too pretty.
1. Spark

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue me.

Author's Notes: **This chapter has been revised to flow better and whatnot.** I am trying a new writing style that is very similar to Kurt Vonnegut's. Try reading his work. Breakfast of Champions and  Slaughterhouse-Five is highly recommended. Reviews will make me happy and grateful. Thanks in advance.

**Spark**

The passenger plane was large. The plane's skin was made of aluminum and it was an excellent conductor.

And what was a plane? It was a tube like thing with wings. Planes carried people and flew through the sky. It was what planes did.

But sometimes they dropped like a rock.

And every time a plane dropped like a rock to make a fiery, limb-infested crater, an engineer would be called in to explain what the problem was. Airlines liked to do that. It was much more cost effective to solve a problem, when an X number of people had already been blown to bits. This was how everybody else in the world knew there was a problem in the first place.

So, every time a new limb-infested crater was made, engineers from all over were sent to find out what was wrong. Sometimes it was faulty wiring, or human error, or lack of maintenance, or lightning, or just some plain old voodoo work. The engineers looked at black boxes, and sifted through the bits and pieces left after the crash, and calculated and calculated and calculated some more to solve the problem. This was what engineers did

After enough of these evaluations had passed, engineers discovered that lightning hit planes all the time. They also noticed that the planes hit by lightning didn't always crash.

"Huh," the engineers said collectively.

They didn't know why some planes crashed and some didn't, so back to the labs they went.

Here, insulation was the key to safety. So, the engineers insulated the important parts that made such a large thing fly, and made sure the skin of the plane discharged most of the lightning by creating a conductive shell.

What was a conductive shell? A conductive shell was engineer speak for an aluminum skin that didn't have any gaps. Aluminum was a conductive metal so it would make a great conductive shell. It was pretty cheap too.

And with this line of logic, the skin around the fuselage was made especially thick. Because if a spark went off in the fuselage, everything would explode, and if it exploded it would kill all the passengers. Blowing up a payload was a bad thing to do, so the engineers tested and tested again and again, and made sure everything was safe.

After a time, engineers also wondered _how_ planes triggered lighting. They tested and examined the phenomena some more, and it just so happened, that if a plane flew through a highly charged cloud, the extra energy would be dispersed as lightning.

A lightning strike would start somewhere on the nose or the wing of the plane, and then travel upward. Such an unlucky plane would obliviously fly through the strike, and the electricity would then hit the vitals of the flying beast. The lights would flicker, but if the plane was well protected enough it would fly away unscathed.

This is what the engineers discovered. They said "Oh," fixed the problem, and moved on.

The engineers fixed the problem, but lightning still hits planes all the time.

And sometimes things break.

And sometimes things fall apart.

And sometimes things explode.

_Boom_. Just like that.

x

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On a particular month, on a particular day, at a particular time, a little girl said goodbye to her parents.

They were leaving on a flight for Hawaii. It was going to be the honeymoon that they never had. Japan's travel agency provided such a nice little package. They would get to take lots of pictures in a rented wedding gown and tuxedo, they would breathe in the fresh clean air, they would see the beach and water and sand, and plus, it was cheaper than a week at the Disneyland in Japan.

Safe—they assured the little girl. It was safe, safe, safe. It was only a week. Just seven days. Only one-hundred sixty-eight hours. It was just a measly six-hundred and four-thousand, eight-hundred seconds. They would come back with souvenirs and pictures and smiles.

The last smiles and hugs and kisses were sent and received.

Then they left, and the world fell apart—tumbling out of the sky like a rock.

It was caused by some 70 million volts traveling through a faulty aluminum skin. Manufacturers call such skins a defect.

x

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The brains inside the plane were defects too.

The pilot was drunk. The co-pilot had some special business in the bathroom. Just ahead there was a cloud. It was charged funny. It was polarized.

The cloud had a positive charge on the bottom and a positive charge on the top and its insides were all negative. It looked black and ominous. Scientists called clouds like these, thunderclouds. These clouds wanted to become neutral. Being charged up wasn't the greatest thing in the world, so something violent would take place for this to happen.

The clouds looked ominous, and still the plane flew. It was what an airplane did. It flew closer to the ominous cloud because the brains of the plane were defects.

It was just a day like that. The heavens decided to strike an aluminum wrapped plane with lightning; just like how Timmy decided to stomp on ants last Sunday.

There was no reason. No reason at all.

It happened because life was unequally unfair.

x

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Meanwhile the parents of the little girl were excited. They didn't know the plane was heading toward an ominous looking, funnily-charged cloud.

Instead of being frightened for their lives, they talked excitedly about expensive food, artificial beaches, and cracks in the earth were it bled molten rocks. This was how Hawaii was created. The earth bled, and the molten rocks spewed forth, then cooled down and covered the earth-wound like a scab. People were attracted to violent things like this.

The two of them were traveling to the most wonderful scab in the world. They were still very happy when the turbulence started and the lights began to flicker. At this point they were fixated on the in-flight movie, and focused on eating their in-flight snacks. They rolled and tumbled in their seats. It was sort of like a massage.

They smiled and ate and watched the screen in front of them, because turbulence was normal in any trip.

x

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There was a bright light. Faster than the blink of the eye, it traveled to his eyes at the speed of light. The pilot twitched. Bright lights equated to a sharp pain in his brain. It seared his existence, and all he did was twitch. It was all he could do because he was hammered, drunk to oblivion, bucked off the bull and thrown half-way across the moon.

The flash of light that seared the pilot's brain was actually the beginnings of a lightning bolt. It had started from nose of the plane, and by the time he twitched, the plane had already started to fly through the bolt.

The pilot didn't take much notice. Nothing mattered anymore. He wished he could die. He felt miserable, and crappy and all alone. His wife had left him the night before. She had just up and left him; thrown a shoe at his face and ran out the door with his dog. This is why he was drunk. She had left him all alone. Alone. Alone. So pitifully alone.

He wished he could die. He couldn't go on.

And luckily for his wife, they hadn't divorced yet, so she got a hefty compensation from the airline when her husband died.

She also got his dog.

x

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Lightning struck.

A fickle thing, that bolt of lightning was. It wanted to travel in the fastest, easiest way ever. There was no stopping. There was no waiting. All it wanted was to go from Point A to Point B, now, now, NOW.

So it struck, and the lightning traveled through the conductive aluminum shell like it was designed to do. This was because the aluminum was conductive. It was the fastest, easiest, way from here to there. Easy and fast. Easy and fast.

Then it hit a road block.

The lightning found a gap in the aluminum skin and saw that air was blocking its way.

The skin was a defect. This means the shell had a crack in it. Easy and fast, the lightning wanted. Easy and fast, easy and fast—so the lightning took the path with least resistance.

It jumped to the fuselage.

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Planes run on very volatile material. The fuel came from dead dinosaur excrement which had been buried under the earth for millions of years. The fuel was volatile, which meant that only a little bit of energy needed to be expended to activate a combustion reaction. Chemists called the energy needed to start any reaction, activation energy.

And what was a combustion reaction? A combustion reaction broke down molecules and gave off heat and water and light.

This would be a large combustion reaction.

After the pilot twitched, and the lightning began its journey—inside the cabin, the passengers noticed the lights were flickering. There wasn't enough time for them to know something was wrong. There wasn't even enough time to scream.

The lightning jumped to the fuselage.

A few microseconds later, the plane went _boom_ and heat and water and light were created in the process.

And the ball of flames blossomed and withered away like a shy flower in the night.

x

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Something broke. Something fell apart. Something exploded.

And an ocean away, in the little island nation of Japan, a little girl got the bad news.

The people said that her parents had gone to a better place. They said they were terribly sorry. They said it was a tragedy.

The girl thought her parents were going to the happiest scab on Earth, but it turns out they had gone someplace else. They left her all alone. Alone. Alone so pitifully alone.

The people told her that others would take care of her. She wanted her parents. They told her that her parents would never come back.

She was abandoned at an early age. Psychologists call this trauma. She would be scarred for life.

Kino Makoto would never heal.

A plane with faulty brains and a faulty skin exploded in midair over the Pacific Ocean. It killed 83 people and traumatized a small girl.

All it had taken was a spark.


	2. Lies

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.

Author's Notes: **This chapter has been revised. **Thanks for the reviews; they give me motivation to edit chapters and begin writing new ones. Just remember that this story is written through a filter, so things might seem a bit warped most of the time. I welcome constructive criticism as I am still learning how to write, and any reviews of any sort will make me happy and grateful.

**Lies**

Makoto examined the bright yellow toy. It reminded her of a telescope that Christopher Columbus might have used, except that hers was small, yellow and made of wood.

And when she looked through it—oh, it was magic.

Her father said that it was like looking through the eyes of a fly. Every glance through the toy showed a splintered image multiplied twenty times over with small compact squares. When she twirled her make believe telescope in a clockwise circle, the squares would change into diamonds and back into squares again, as the tiny pictures were repeated again and again in a pattern to create something entirely new.

She laughed and marveled at it—the distorted images of everything so familiar. Her father had given it to her on a whim; it was just something he had gotten when he walked back home one day.

Makoto looked and looked, and with all the fun that she was having, her father also took this opportunity to tell her what her name meant. This was a very parent-like thing to do. He was giving her a pearl of wisdom about the world.

And what was a pearl of wisdom? It was a grain of truth smacking someone in the face.

So, this is what he did. Makoto's father decided to tell her what her name meant. He said that her name meant "truth."

And later on, after a plane with faulty brains and a faulty skin exploded in mid-air over the Pacific Ocean, Makoto started to wonder why her father never bothered to take the time to explain why he named her this.

Because at this point she believed that everyone lied. It was a disease that people caught as they grew older. And if everybody lied, she reasoned, how could people name their children, Makoto?

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Makoto didn't remember a lot of what her parents said, but here is a story her parents told her:

"Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a beautiful princess. She was the prettiest and fairest princess in all the land. But one day some evil goons, (they were from the dark kingdom, you see) tried to kill this princess. They tried to kill her because they were jealous of her good looks and pure heart, and things looked like trouble for a time. Suddenly—a brave prince from a faraway nation came to the rescue. He saved the princess from the goons and together they destroyed the dark kingdom. They got married and they lived happily ever after. The End."

This story had a happy ending. And all the stories Makoto had ever heard, had a happy ending.

But Makoto didn't believe in happy endings anymore.

She stopped believing when her happy ending was stepped on, burned and shattered to pieces. The people who wrote stories were liars, because in real life only sad things happened. Happy endings only existed in stories.

She didn't believe what other people said, either. People told _white lies_. They were meant to protect the fragile minds of children but Makoto thought it was just lying.

Lying, it was all lying.

People lied, writers lied, and her parents lied to her too.

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Once upon a time, Makoto believed in Santa Claus. He was a man that lived on the North Pole and kept a big long list of all the good children and all the bad children in the world. On Christmas the bad children would get lumps of coal and the good ones would get presents.

These presents were made by elves. They toiled day and night in workshops to make presents for good children. People could call these workshops—_sweatshops _too. A sweatshop was a place where people would work all day for little money.

Sweatshops didn't look like such nice places. The people there worked a lot. They sweated too. Sometimes they even lost fingers. She wondered why people didn't call the workshops—_sweatshops_.

Makoto wondered about this because she had seen a documentary on sweatshops a few days ago. Her parents liked to have her watch educational things, since those programs gave her several pearls of wisdom about the world.

So, why didn't people call the elves' workshops, sweatshops? Makoto figured that it was very cold up there in the North Pole. The elves couldn't _sweat _so much, so they called it a _workshop_ instead.

She also heard that Santa Claus was fat and merry. He had fat reindeer that flew. These fat reindeer pulled the sleigh that carried the presents and the fat man called Santa Claus. He traveled on Christmas Eve to every house in the world. He would then shimmy down chimneys and place the lumps of coal and cheaply produced presents beneath Christmas trees in every home.

He worked one day a year. Makoto thought this was why he was fat.

She didn't know that for a man to deliver presents to every house in the world he would have to travel at an average speed of sixteen thousand and nine kilometers per second and carry a payload of four-hundred fifty-three million, five-hundred ninety-two thousand, three-hundred seventy kilograms. She wasn't old enough or bored enough to know.

That didn't matter, because at one point, Makoto believed in Santa Claus, and one day she stayed up late so she could catch a glimpse of him. Makoto's apartment didn't have a chimney, so she always wondered how Santa Claus could get to her house. Every Christmas Eve, she made sure the window was open. This was so that Santa Claus could climb in from there instead.

Now, it was really hard to stay awake because her eyelids kept drooping as the sky got darker and darker; and every time her eyelids drooped it was harder to open them again. As this happened, Makoto hid in her dark corner and waited for Santa Claus to come. After several hours of eyelids drooping and forcing them to open again, she finally saw someone, but it wasn't Santa Claus.

She saw her father sneaking toward the Christmas tree. In his hands were presents. On the label it said it was from jolly old Saint Nick.

Makoto jumped on her father and yelled "AHA!"

The lie was over. Her father laughed. They both laughed.

And after that night she didn't believe in Santa Claus anymore. From now on she knew presents came from her father. She thanked her father properly.

Makoto was a bit sad knowing that Santa Claus didn't exist, but she was glad that those elves in the North Pole didn't have to work in sweatshops anymore.

It must have been cold.

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An eternity later, Makoto found that lies were cold as the North Pole. No, they were colder than that.

When Makoto discovered new lies, they chilled her right down to her heart, and her heart would skip a beat. They were so cold that they hurt.

Everybody could lie. Her parents could lie.

And her parents lied to her one last time as they began their journey to the happiest scab on Earth. Minutes before they entered that airplane with faulty brains and a faulty skin, her parents had said that they would come back.

They said they would come back, and they never did.

And that lie was so cold; it burned a hole right through her heart.

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The traumatized girl was only seven. Her parental units were dead. Her new guardians were not.

A cousin twice removed was taking care of her. This was because the rest of Makoto's family had a bad tendency to die. They died early and young. Somehow, the world didn't seem to like them so much.

The cousin twice removed had a big heart. It was ten percent larger than the average man's. It just so happened that the cousin and his wife couldn't have children, so they jumped at the chance to take care of her. They actually jumped and yelled and screamed. This was family and it would be like a child of their own. They would feel happy. They would be a complete family unit.

Makoto couldn't understand this so well, so she became angry. She never met her cousin twice removed. They were strangers.

She got angry. Her anger built up pressure. It raged and boiled and built up steam. Pretty soon she would explode just like a volcano. When she erupted, all her rage and anger would fly out and there wouldn't be a scab big enough in the world to make her stop. She had a wound somewhere in her heart and it wouldn't stop bleeding.

This was where the pressure was building up especially.

Makoto was slowly dying and everyone in the world was too, but she didn't understand that yet either.

She wasn't old enough.

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Makoto didn't understand a lot of things, but that was ok since the government already had a remedy for this. The government forced children to attend school.

And what was school? It was a place where children were brainwashed for the good of society.

At school they had this horrible tradition of allotting one day of the year for children to show off their parents. This was show-and-tell with people.

In the past, certain Europeans colonists did this with black people too. The only difference was that they were being sold. Makoto watched a documentary on this a month before. They were called slaves, and they did work for no pay at all.

Parents worked for their children. They did work for no pay at all. Sometimes they would get love instead. Sometimes they wouldn't.

Makoto had a problem. Her parents were blown to bits and scattered all across the Pacific Ocean. She would have to bring her twice removed cousin instead.

He was a garbage man, and this wasn't something you showed and telled.

So the children brought their parents, and in Makoto's case she brought her twice removed cousin.

They showed and telled. There were doctors, lawyers, housewives, policemen, fire fighters, businessmen and others. There was one writer, and of course, there was one garbage man too.

The children thought it was funny to be a garbage man. They were too young to understand that they might be a garbage man one day too. Then it wouldn't be so funny anymore. It was a job. It brought food to the table, and that was a very respectable thing. The children weren't old enough to know this.

The adults talked about what they did and said that the children had to work hard in school to get where they were. This was supposed to be motivational.

They were lying too. School wasn't everything.

The writer, in fact, had dropped out of school. He had just given it up because he was God's gift to Earth. This was what he thought, at least.

He had dropped out of high school to become a starving artist. A starving artist was a person who was creative, or thought they were creative, that starved. They didn't work so much. They liked to think about the world, and that was why they starved.

Fortunately for the man, someone liked his black scribbles on paper. This meant that he was published. Now the man made a respectable amount of money for thinking.

The writer thought he should give these children a pearl of wisdom. It was a parent-like thing to do. It was something motivational that didn't have to deal with school. So, the writer quoted: "The pen is mightier than the sword."

The man thought he was being brilliant for repeating a phrase, but he forgot that a parrot can do the same thing. Adults tend to forget a lot of things sometimes.

And the children blinked when they heard the saying, because they had a saying too: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words may never hurt me."

The two saying contradicted each other, and like oil and water they just didn't mix. Someone was lying. Again.

Makoto blinked and thought about it a bit before deciding that the man was lying. A sword could lob off a person's head whereas a pen could only spread black ink over paper.

The writer only convinced her further that people lied more as they grew older. It must be some sort of disease. She learned about diseases and bacteria last week, because there was a special about it on TV.

That was school. School traumatized small children on a daily basis and told them lies—it was a perfect brain washing machine.

School was a terrible place. They forced children to learn terrible things, and do terrible activities, and sometimes terrible events just happened on their own.

What was that terrible event? It was the day Makoto erupted.

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Some of the children found out that her parents had been blown to bits over the Pacific Ocean, this added to the fact that her twice removed cousin was a garbage-man was too juicy a target. People liked to laugh at other's pain. It was a human response that was un-human.

They taunted and teased her. They threw sharp and pointy words at her wounded heart. The wound there grew bigger, and as it did, she did she lost her restraints. Walls started to buckle from the sheer volume of anger bottled up inside, she built up pressure, she built up steam—then she finally snapped and all hell broke loose.

It happened because a little boy was stupid enough to say things he didn't mean.

If it had been another time and place, his mouth would have been washed out with soap. This was what he said: "Stupid Bitch!"

The little boy didn't understand that _bitch_ was a noun for a female dog. He heard the phrase yesterday on the TV. He knew it was a bad word. He liked bad things. He also liked his bitch that he owned. It was a female dog. He probably shouldn't have called her a "stupid bitch." It meant that he liked her. He was a liar too. He just didn't know it yet.

At any rate, Makoto had already erupted. It was a silent eruption. This was the deadliest kind. People didn't know what hit them until it was too late.

And her twice removed cousin had given her a pearl of wisdom a few weeks ago. He knew that she was bottling up anger inside, when she should have released it. So one day he told her: "If you really get upset, just hit something. It's what I always do. Hit something and you'll feel better. Trust me; you'll feel a lot better."

So she did.

The closest target was the little boy who blurted out a noun that meant a female dog. He was a bit chubby so he would be soft and squishy when Makoto punched him.

She punched him. Then kicked him. Then punched him several more times in the face. Every time she hit him, there was a muffled sort of _thwack_ sound that echoed across the room. If he had been a punching bag Psychologists would have called this therapeutic.

He was not a punching bag.

Sometime later adults pulled her off of him. She felt much better now. The little boy did not.

When she was done, his face was black and blue. She also knocked out one of his baby teeth. Some people called this karma. Others called it an atrocity.

Teachers were shocked. Parents were outraged.

She was a "problem child." She was broken someplace inside and no one could fix it. The teachers and the administration didn't want to try anymore. She was a danger. She was a threat to society. She was Humpty-Dumpty left in a million pieces.

Everyone knew this. They were too lazy to try.

She got expelled.

The only thing scarier than going to school was the monsters they put inside of them.

Words hurt, and Makoto knew that the children were wrong. This felt a million times worse than a broken bone. Words felt like red hot needles slowly inserted into her heart.

Her heart had freezer burn, and now it was being attacked by hot and pointy words. She wasn't sure if she could take it anymore. Her heart was going to shatter or explode.

And if the children had been lying about how words felt like, that meant that the writer may have been telling the truth. The saying that "the pen is mightier than the sword" could have meaning, and if it did, it would be the first true thing she heard out of an adult in a while.

Perhaps she could take a stab at it. Makoto already tried the sword. She punched someone into a bloody pulp and then she got expelled. That didn't work so well, so maybe the pen wasn't so bad. She decided to write a story instead, it would have a happy ending because this was how all stories were supposed to be like.

But Makoto didn't know that this was a lie too. She believed this because the people called adults were censoring the books with sad endings. They were afraid that books with sad endings were too traumatic for children to handle. They were afraid that children weren't ready to handle the real world.

The adults should have censored her life instead, but no one bothered to look, and no one bothered to care, so Makoto just went on to write her story with a happy ending anyway.

After a few scratches and scribbles on paper, Makoto created the moon princess.

Her name would be Usagi. The name meant "rabbit."

Makoto heard a story once that rabbits lived on the moon and made candy for children. This princess wouldn't be like Santa Claus. The rabbits wouldn't work in sweatshops. She would be pretty and have a good heart. She would help the rabbits and they would be her friends. The princess was named Usagi because she loved them so much.

She loved them and didn't get any pay. They loved her back.

She would never die either. Dying was a bad thing.

Dying was a bad thing because it was the final symptom of the lying disease. This was why everyone in the world died.

Makoto's parents died too.

Makoto scribbled away with her pen. She was huddled in a cozy corner of her room. She was safe here.

The dark ink flowed across the page. It was what pens did. She scribbled away and some of the pressure building up in her heart started to drift away. She stopped thinking about her blown up parents scattered across the Pacific Ocean. For a moment all that dispersed like ashes in the wind.

She liked to scribble words down on paper. It was fun. Psychologists called this therapeutic too.

Usagi and the rabbits only existed in her mind. All writers were liars. Makoto had grown old enough to contract the lying disease.

Lying, lying, everybody was lying, in all sorts of shapes and sizes from all over the globe. And as Makoto wrote and lied in her own corner of the globe, she wondered why her father gave her that name.

She wondered, because her name meant "truth."


	3. Look

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.

Author's Notes: **Whoops, sorry. This chapter has been revised a second time.** I tried putting some elements of chapter 4 into chapter 3, and well that didn't work out very well. Now it's closer to the original version, but with 2 new sections.Reviews are always welcome, and don't worry about hurting my ego, since the worst it will do is make me change this chapter around, yet again.

**Look**

_Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock_

This was the sound of time passing in her room. It came from a little clock.

And the clock went: _Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock_

_Doki-doki__, Doki-doki, Doki-doki._

Sometimes she couldn't sleep at night. She heard her heart beating. It pounded loud in her head.

And her heart went: _Doki-doki__, Doki-doki, Doki-doki._

Makoto turned eight.

Three-hundred sixty-five and a quarter days had passed. That was 15,778,800 _ticks_. There were also 15,778,800 _tocks_

Together they went _Tick-tock_, _Tick-tock_

At that time when several million _ticks_ hadn't _ticked_ and _tocks_ hadn't _tocked_ Her parents' hearts still went _Doki-doki__, Doki-doki, _

When Makoto was seven, her parents were alive

Now they were dead and blown up into little pieces, like grains of sand.

Time passed. It slipped. Grains fell.

And Makoto's clock went: _Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock _

And Makoto's heart went: _Doki-doki__, Doki-doki, Doki-doki._

That was the sound of time passing.

Time ran around in circles all day, so history was of great interest to Kino Makoto. Humans tended to run around in circles too.

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And one day Makoto wondered about carrier pigeons, because way back when, they were used as forms of communication.

Makoto had a cell phone. A cell phone was a little stick where people yelled in from one end and sound came out from the other. The little sticks could vibrate too. Pretty much everyone in Japan had one because they were cheaper than getting a land-line phone.

She always wondered how the birds could deliver a message from one place to another, and then return home again. This was because the carrier pigeons didn't seem so smart. Makoto figured that their brains were the size of a small seed, since their eyes took most of the space in their head.

The pigeons didn't seem that smart and yet they never got lost. They knew how to get from one place to another. They always knew how to get back home.

People always seemed to get lost. They were lost even when they knew where they were. People had brains the size of large grapefruits.

Makoto wondered how a birdbrain could outwit a human-brain. It was a mystery.

Makoto got lost, and her brain was the size of a large grapefruit.

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One day everything was packed up into boxes, and her guardians ran around in circles from sunrise to sunset. They wrapped things up in wads of newspaper, and flittered from one box to another, depositing some things and taking others out.

She figured that they were mummifying the objects for the afterlife. She saw a special on mummies and pyramids before. The ancient Egyptians took out all the innards of a person, and wrapped them all up with bandages so that they would last forever. They would also bury all of their belongings with them so that they could use it in the afterlife.

Makoto supposed the items in the apartment had died, and her twice removed cousin was just giving them a proper send off. She observed as they carefully wrapped each dish in layers of newspaper print, and stuffed them into their sarcophagus-boxes. The Egyptians would usually decorate the sarcophaguses so that it would elegantly depict the people who died. Her guardians labeled these boxes with magic markers, so that the boxes would say: "Dishes," "Clothes," "Books" and so on.

Bit by bit the apartment became empty, and pretty soon some other people ran around in circles, so that those sarcophaguses-boxes, marked with magic, would be placed into a waiting van. The van drove away with all of their stuff, off into the afterlife.

But then her twice removed cousin and his wife, packed Makoto into the sedan, and drove off too.

They sailed away from her previous life.

After hours of driving, Makoto was released into a new environment. She didn't know the way back home so she stayed where she was. She was lost.

People called this process, "moving."

Now she lived in the sparkling city of Tokyo, in the tiny portion called Jubban. No one knew her here. She was nobody and she liked it that way. She moved here because a terrible event occurred at her old school.

And her guardians were worried about her. They didn't want her to get in trouble again. They gave her a new pearl of wisdom that day, and this is what they said: "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. If everyone does this, everything will be alright. Everything will be alright. Everything will be all right, Makoto."

And Makoto thought they were talking to themselves.

Her guardians were running around in circles. It was because the items that died needed to be de-mummified. The truth was that they had come back to life again. It was a miracle.

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It was also a miracle that carrier pigeons knew where they were going.

And one day Makoto found out why. She was lucky enough to catch a television program on migrating animals. The scientists on the screen said they had a theory that certain animals could use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate all across the world.

This was how carrier pigeons could get from Point A to Point B and return home again. They had a magnetic compass that never left them.

The scientists said that people could use a bit of this too. They figured out that males had a tiny portion of metal in their brains. Males could somewhat tell what direction they were in. To them this was East or West or South or North. Some males had more metal than others. The ones with less metal tended to get lost because they were afraid to ask for directions.

Males had some metal in their brains to tell them where to go, but females weren't so fortunate. Scientists said that people used to be hunter-gatherers. This meant that the males would roam about the land while the females would stay home and rear the children.

Females didn't have a portion of metal in their brain. They got to where they needed to go by landscape instead. They remembered the places around them. They also knew how to ask for directions. Males and females nowadays can get from Point A to Point B equally well.

Makoto was a girl. She didn't have a portion of metal in the brain, so she looked at the signs in the landscape instead.

In Tokyo there was one sign said: "**SLOW DOWN**"

So she did. She slowed down for anybody else who happened to be in the way.

A bit further there was another sign that said: "**STOP**"

And so she stopped. But Makoto didn't realize that she stopped a long time ago. She was stuck in a rut. She was trapped in a quagmire. The forces pushing on her didn't have enough energy to overcome static friction. She was stopped and she didn't realize it.

It happed when she was seven. That was several million _ticks_ and _tocks_ ago.

If only there was a sign that said: "**GO**" it would have solved all her problems. She would have gone on to wherever she was going to go, but she hadn't found that sign yet.

It didn't exist. She would have to make it herself.

x

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Listen. This is what happened so far:

There was a midair explosion over the Pacific Ocean. It killed 83 people. Of all the people on board, two of them belonged to Kino Makoto. They were her parents.

Kino Makoto was a little girl. She was scarred by the traumatic event. She was only seven at the time.

On a particular day she erupted at school. She pounded a boy's face black and blue. That wasn't so great because she got expelled for that. Then, Makoto picked up a pen instead. When she did that, the black ink flowed and the wiggly scribbles appeared one by one on the page.

Her story was full of rabbits and a girl named Usagi. They made candy on the moon.

That was then and this is now, because the march of time rolls on despite how many people are stuck in one traumatic moment.

Now, Makoto was eight. Rabbits weren't so cool anymore. They were white and fluffy, but all they did was: eat and poop and pee.

There was one in her classroom. It was cute, but all it did was: eat and poop and pee.

Rabbits weren't so cool anymore. She had to write about something else.

And she thought. And she thought. And she thought.

So she reached into the back of her mind and pulled out a pearl of wisdom. It was gathering cobwebs back there.

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Once upon a time there was a teacher that cared. He was from her old school, but he didn't have any real power. He was just an old guy trying to keep his job. He couldn't help her, but he understood her. He knew the pain she was going through. He had been a broken man. He used to be a delinquent.

Once upon a time his old man had beaten his mom to death. His father used a bat to crush her skull in. Once upon a time his father was sentenced for life in jail.

This teacher knew about pain. He lived it. He breathed it. It trundled him, and dragged him through the shards of sharp glass. His soul had been seared and flambéed, but he survived. He survived.

He couldn't help her physically. She could only help herself. Instead he left a cryptic message with her. It was a pearl of wisdom. This was what adults did. They left them in hopes that younger people wouldn't make the same mistakes. This is what he said: "Kid. You've got to look around. Look at the sky. Look at the ground. Notice that weird kid behind you. Notice the cicadas. Notice the cockroach. Notice the air. Notice everything. You just gotta look around once in a while. JUST LOOK."

Makoto blinked. The pearl of wisdom passed. It was gone and used up, but it had done something all the same. She picked up a piece of paper and a pen and she looked.

This is what she saw:

She was sitting in a room. It was her room. It had four walls.

Her door opened. There were two kittens. One was black. The other one was white.

There were two cats.

There were two cats.

Cats? Why were there cats?

"Happy Birthday!!"

Makoto saw the cats at the door. Her twice removed cousin and his wife came through her door too. They were the ones who shouted "Happy Birthday!"

Behind them, she could see things framed by the doorway. The whole apartment was decorated with ribbons and streamers. They were red and blue and green. There were balloons of all colors and shapes and sizes, and there was a cake too. On the cake it said: "Happy Birthday Makoto!" There were a total of eight candles on them.

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The tradition went like this:

People put the same number of candles on the birthday cake as the person's age. The wicks of the candle would be lit up with fire. It was a combustion reaction. It gave off heat and light and water.

The birthday person would then make a wish and blow out the candles. If he or she blew out all the candles it was rumored that the wish would come true.

So Makoto and her twice removed cousin and his wife sat down and got to celebrating. Makoto was a bit shocked. They caught her off guard. She felt loved for a moment. That is, until she remembered what her birthday wish was.

It was her only wish in the world. She had been told by everyone that it would not come true, so she wished for it anyway.

Makoto closed her eyes and blew as hard as she could.

She opened her eyes, and looked, and saw that the flames had died.

No wait, they came back to life!

Makoto's eyes widened when she saw the flames reignite. She kept on blowing, but the flames kept on popping up, like stubborn zombies. She blew and she blew and she blew some more, and then her eyes began to water and redden. The flames kept on coming back to life and the anger continued to bubble up from her heart. It was like red hot magma. It was burning her throat. And still the flames kept on living. So she kept on blowing and blowing and blowing!

Her guardians finally realized their error and rushed to get water.

_Trick candles! Tricks! Tricks! Adults and their lies!_

But deep down inside Makoto knew that the candles wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The eight little candles on her birthday cake stood like iron posts staked in the ground. She couldn't pull out a candle and pretend it didn't happen. Nothing could turn back time—it only rolled in one direction.

So Makoto just watched as the wisps of smoke slithered lazily toward the ceiling, and ate a piece of cake.

That was her birthday. It was celebrated on her real birthday.

x

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Way back when, Japanese people used to celebrate their birthdays on the same day. They all got older on New Years day. They had a big party all together and everyone was special. It was a social event. Japan adopted a western tradition. They adopted a lot of western things. It allowed them to dominate Asia for a short time. But that was then and this is now.

Now Japan didn't want to take over the world. Now they made shiny and cool gadgets instead.

It's how things are. Time changes things.

And time was stupid because it only ran in one direction; just like people.

People give gifts to people on their birthdays. It was a tradition.

In Makoto's case she received two kittens.

Two kittens are strange gifts for an eight year old. Normally an adult would have given an eight year old a doll or an action figure.

But this girl was different. She was lonely and shut everything else out.

So the twice removed cousin and his wife bought two kittens for their young charge. At first they went to the pet store and were tempted to buy rabbits. They both knew that she was writing about rabbits. They sometimes stumbled onto snippets of her story in her room.

But rabbits didn't live too long. Their brains were the size of a nut. They weren't too smart either; they always had a vacant sort of look. Rabbits didn't live too long, so the twice removed cousin said it was better to not have her experience more death. Cats could live pretty long.

They thought that by the time the cats died she would be old enough to handle it. This is why they bought two kittens for Makoto's birthday. They were trying to maximize the amount of time the two cats would have with Makoto.

They bought two just in case one of them didn't like her. They bought two just in case one of them got run over or got lost.

Two was better than one.

On her eighth birthday Makoto received two kittens.

One was black. The other was white. One day they walked into her room and that was that.

It was the beginning of another story

Makoto couldn't stop writing. She just had an urge to do it. She just wanted to do it. She just needed to it.

She ran in one direction too.

She wanted to write even though all she wrote were lies. She didn't know what purpose stories were for. They were just there, and she wrote them.

Now she wanted to write new stories. She thought it would be very hard.

And Makoto didn't realize it yet, but she all had to do, was look.

That was the trick to writing. All the good stories were just under her nose. They were just waiting to be released.

And all it took was a look—a good long look.


	4. Vision

Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply.

Author's Notes: Enjoy the last chapter of Makoto's childhood. We're moving on to junior high school after this. So sit back, relax and pet the kitties on the way out.

**Vision**

It was the first day of class, and the students were sitting attentively, and the teacher was teaching very teacher-like because that's what he was. The man was somewhat tall and lean, and his eyebrows were perpetually scrunched together so that he always looked confused or angry. On this particular day, he was wearing a pink shirt and a blue tie matched by khaki pants and leather shoes.

Now, the students didn't know it yet, but this teacher was qualified to be a lawyer, he used to be a bicycle racer, and he didn't have his left thumb—he lost that appendage to skin cancer.

This was the type of teacher he was. He was weird and eccentric, and odd thoughts liked to come into his head. He was just that sort of man. He was a perfect literature teacher.

And while the students were pondering on the summer reading they did—and did not do—the teacher went about saying the first few pearls of wisdom he hoped to bestow upon them.

This is what he said: "Today we'll be talking about literature."

It wasn't a surprise really, seeing that it was a literature class.

He then paused for dramatic effect. The man being so wise and experienced, knew that silence, like water, cleanses the palate best only except with the brain. So, he waited. He paused.

He began again and said: "Have we really asked ourselves what literature really means? Forget about what you have been spoon fed—forget what your teachers know—because they don't really know anything. Yes, I just said it, we don't know _anything_.

"All we do is regurgitate the same bits of truth and taste that all our forbearers passed on to our fathers, and our fathers to us, and us to you, and etcetera, etcetera. It's all the same, but what do you think? Why do people keep on writing? What makes certain things good, great, and downright detestable? What is literature? What's the point?

"That's the million dollar question, isn't it kiddies? What's the point?"

And then he pointed and words came out at the same time: "YOU! Answer the question."

He pointed with the index finger that was connected to his thumb-less hand. It was aimed at a little Asian girl of Japanese decent, who spoke English pretty damn well if she could say anything about it. She was a genius with words and that was that.

So she paused. She thought. And this is what she said:

"Well is there a 'point' in the first place? Think about it. _The 'point'_ can be anything that any person wishes it to be. _The 'point'_ is always ambiguous, elusive and created entirely by the feeble human mind. 'And how so,' you say?"

She paused, and then picked up a paperback book.

"Well, imagine that this piece of literature is equivalent to an ink-blot, and imagine again that three people have examined it. What do they see? To Bob that blob of ink might just look like an elephant, to Mary-Ann it might just look like a butterfly, and to Edmund it might just look like his bloody father holding a bloody axe."

She put the book down.

"Every person will see something different in a story, but just because _the 'point'_ isn't a single clear cut dot, doesn't mean that literature isn't important. We are what we eat, and we think how we read. So every time a person reads, chews, and digests a piece of literature; chances are that they've changed a little bit in the process.

"Just think of literature as a bad, murky messed up still-shot of life. People write because they can't help it. They just have this urge to. Their dreams, and hopes, and fears, and feelings overflow onto paper. And just because we're so human and curious, we can't resist the temptation of reading. Literature is just another medium for information and experience to be passed from one person to another. We're social creatures. It's what we do."

"Now is there a point to Literature? I don't know, but I think it would be a scary world without it. We need it—_just because_. _Just because._ That's it. We need it _just because_. And I'll leave it up to all of your talented brains to fill in the blanks."

She closed her mouth and silence entered the hall. It was a stately silence, the type that dreams are made of. The words passed through open ears and then the gears and motors in the eccentric teacher's mind turned. _Click-clack-click_. He rubbed his stubbly beard and he asked: "What's your name?"

The small girl replied: "Makoto."

And the teacher flashed a smile before he pointed at his next victim.

It turns out that it was special of him to ask for her name because he was a _professor_, not just a teacher. There were at least three-hundred people crammed into one dinky room with a professor in a pink shirt gabbling about literature. They were attending the first term of the year sitting in a class that was required for graduation.

And where was she exactly?

She was in America. She was in college. This is where Makoto ended up.

And stuff happened between then and now; so listen.

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In the last chapter Makoto moved to Tokyo and got two cats for her birthday.

She was eight and there were only a few things that happened because she was eight.

Children at that age spent all their time wanting to grow up faster. Of course, all that did was ensure that time slowed down. It was like waiting for water to boil. If a person stared at it, it would take an eternity.

Makoto was doing this. She was staring at each _tick_ and _tock_ that passed her way. She took each sound of her little clock and categorized it away and checked it off. It was one less _tick _or _tock_ in her way. It was taking an eternity for them to pass. She wanted to grow up, because being grown up meant that there was no pain at all. She wanted to be strong.

But in that mess of wishing and wanting and waiting, there was something else that happened.

She began to look—really _look_—and that made all the difference in the world.

And Makoto's clock went: _Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Tick-tock _and Makoto's heart went: _Doki-doki__, Doki-doki, Doki-doki. _

And time sped up.

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Now take a few steps back, because something like that is very fun to do, and see that some ten years ago it was the first day of class too.

Actually, it was the first day of class for Makoto. She was expelled for pounding a little boy's face black and blue, and as such, had to transfer in the middle of the year. When she moved to Tokyo, she was expecting a fresh start and something new to do.

It was sort of sad when she saw what her new school looked like. It was like some evil and dull man had decided to design all of the schools in Japan. The same tired looking gates. The same tired looking buildings.

New school, old school, all the same school. How sad. How boring.

And this particular learning facility wasn't an architectural wonder. It was barely decent. The thing was a squat rectangular box. It had a grayish tinge to it, just some boxes inside more boxes really. There was even a rumor that the school was made by a prison designer. If Makoto didn't know better, she could have thought her new school was a prison too.

In prison they clothed and fed and enlightened convicts behind bars.

At school they fed and educated children behind an iron gate.

Makoto thought about it again. And school was prison. It was a part time prison, from sunrise to sunset, or at least for a good time between—schools was where small children were brainwashed for the good of society.

So, she kept this in mind, as she took her old sweet time, and moseyed on down to classroom B-2.

As she walked, Makoto noticed that the hallways here looked just like death row—they were pale and empty and devoid of hope.

_Dead girl walking._She called out in her head. Her shoes echoed in the hallways.

Click—clack. _Click—clack_.

_Dead girl walking._She called out in her head again. _Dead girl walking._

Death row was a place in America where they shot people up with drugs. Their hearts would stop after that, because other's hearts had stopped beating for them. This is what people in America did when they didn't care anymore. This is what happened when they got upset. Just a few pricks are all it takes. A few injections, and time stops beating. It was the final destination for true delinquents.

The school reminded her of a scene in a movie.

_Dead girl walking,_ she repeated.

And her shoes_ click-clacked _in response.

Makoto tried counting the number of steps that it took to reach her classroom. She stopped counting after the number reached forty-four.

It wasn't much of a trek, but here she was, classroom B-2.

This was her classroom, her new home away from home for a good portion of the day.

When she laid her eyes on it, Makoto realized that her room wasn't very special either. B-2 was like any other classroom. It had a teacher and students and desks. Here, the children were sitting not quite so attentively. It was in their nature to squirm and jump and giggle and play.

The teacher in classroom B-2 was a Japanese middle-aged woman, and that wasn't such a surprise either. The country was full of Japanese people, and middle-aged people were abundant too. She looked like she could be someone's mother. She had that type of look.

When Makoto entered the room, the class kept on conversing because school hadn't started yet, and Makoto noticed that the children looked all very similar. They all had black hair, and all had eyes that were different shades of brown. They all wore uniforms too. The clothes were all the same color and everyone looked all very much the same.

Her new classmates reminded her of cookies. Her mother showed her how to make sugar cookies once. They would take the dough, and roll it out, and they would use a cookie-cutter to cut gingerbread man shapes out of it.

They all were alike. Save for a few defects here and there. Makoto remembered that her mother let her eat the defects first.

They tasted the same. They were just a bit deformed here or there.

Makoto wondered if she tasted the same too.

x

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So on her first day of school Makoto stood in the doorway thinking about cookies. Fortunately for her it was only a few minutes before the bell rang. It was a long sort of melodious bell. It was the sort of thing people would play before a PA announcement.

After the bell rang, the Japanese middle-aged woman clapped her hands and the twenty-six students, dressed in the same type of uniforms, looked up.

"Oh yes." The woman looked at Makoto, "Class, today we have a new transfer student."

The teacher's mother-like tone quieted the room of whispers and giggles. She smiled to her flock and pointed to the little girl standing by the chalkboard.

And Makoto knew that pointing was her cue to introduce herself, because she had seen things similar to this on TV. Usually the new girls or guys in those soap operas were the ones to shake things up. Those people on TV met new people and got accepted into different social groups, and often times they would fall in love, or other people wouldn't like them so much, because things like that made TV more interesting. It was a pattern she saw often.

The little girl, dressed in a slightly different uniform, bowed to the class and said: "It's a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Kino Makoto." It was a phrase that all those other new students on TV said, so Makoto said it too. It was just another lie.

She took a good look at her sugar-cookie classmates. They all had the same beady eyes and the same types of frosting. There were rows upon rows of similar cookie shapes, and yet she didn't see any flaws. Was she the single defect in a batch of cookies?

Makoto wondered if someone had purposely messed up her cookie shape. That they had purposely burned her sugar-cookie parents to ashes, and left her defective. She thought her sugar-cookie shape had a hole in it. It was where her heart was supposed to be.

She imagined her cookie shape, but no one but Makoto knew what the new transfer student was thinking. So, the Japanese middle-aged woman showed the little girl to an empty desk, oblivious to the wound that was profusely bleeding where the little girl's heart was.

The teacher taught. Boring words came out of the boring Japanese middle-aged woman's mouth. Makoto found it much easier staring out the window. She stared at little specks in the sky. They twirled and circled against the background of never-ending blue.

And here, Makoto wondered if the birds knew the true meaning of freedom.

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Time passed because it does.

Makoto had her birthday. Two cats came into her life. Her birthday wish didn't come true.

And other things happened, but they weren't that interesting because she was eight. Memories are picky things. Most of the time memories only record the traumatic events in life. Normal everyday life gets blurred as time marches forward. Things get forgotten. Things get lost.

A lot of her memories were blurred, but Makoto clearly remembered that her cats were very fuzzy.

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Scientists believe that having a pet relieves stress.

A cat is a pooping-peeing-eating machine, and millions upon millions of people own them. It is general knowledge that cats have this great ability to be standoffish and loving at once, so that they're treated as superior rather than inferior to people. And still millions upon millions of people own them. People tolerate this trait because cats are fuzzy and warm and make cool meowing noises.

Makoto found this out early in her life.

She was eight. She had two kittens, and they thought they owned her and she thought she owned them. In the end though, everything turned all right because she loved them and they loved her back unconditionally.

They were fuzzy and they meowed in the morning to wake her up, and they purred when she pet them. Sometimes she would put her ear to their side when petting them and the purring would fill up her entire world.

It sounded like this: "_PUURR-URRR, PUUUR-URRR_."

Makoto once heard monks chanting "_OOOOMMMMM_" on TV. It was a sound that filled everything. A cat's purr was just that. It was the word "om" but in their cat language.

It was the most perfect sound in the world.

She had two cats. One cat was black and one cat was white, and Makoto still had to name them.

At first Makoto decided to name her cats after the moon, but she didn't think it would be nice to name them Moon1 and Moon2. She decided to do research instead.

In this age of information, the knowledge of a thousand-thousand books came to her beck and call, with just the use of her small fingers. Information from all over the globe was transmitted to a beige box.

The box was useful for her cats to sit on.

On the internet, there was a search engine. It was an engine that searched. It had a little blank box that ate up words and spat out links to new and faraway places.

So Makoto fed the search engine a word. This is what she typed: "M-O-O-N."

The search engine gobbled down the four letters and the little search engine chugged and chugged because it thought it could—and then it spat out links to new and faraway places. Makoto clicked on the links, and surfed the web, and learned all sorts of things.

Earth was the third rock from the sun. There were other rocks and balls of gas that floated around the sun. There were nine of them, and they were named after Roman gods.

In particular, she found lots of names for the moon. They were moon Goddesses, in Roman and Greek flavors.

And her cats were a pair. It was like the dark side of the moon, and the light side.

Luna and Artemis.

They were the smartest things in the world. They were angels.

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Children are monsters.

Children are angels too.

Sometimes they're both.

Take the time to look, really look, and see that one second a child can be the warmest and loving creature on Earth, and in another moment become demon-spawn whose job is to torment other's souls and rip hearts out. They have the capacity to be both, because humans have the ability to be both.

And one day, a little boy, who had the potential to be both angel and demon, was curious about the new transfer student. She stared out the window all day and watched the birds go by.

She didn't shake things up. She wasn't integrated into social groups. She didn't fall in love.

She was nobody.

But something drew him to her. Maybe he knew that she had a hole in her heart that was still bleeding. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he forgot that at this age, girls were gross and yucky.

Still the little boy went.

One day he walked to the window and said "Hello."

"Hello."

Makoto looked up. The sound came from a little boy standing by the side of her desk. Sounds tended to tickle her mind sometimes. She hadn't been expecting any sort of noise directed to her personally, so it took her a while to form the appropriate response.

Her tongue and mouth moved just so, to create this sound: "Hello."

Then, the little boy smiled and Makoto looked at him.

He was Japanese and had short black hair and his eyes were a light brown. She had seen him around school a couple of times before, but it didn't help that his face could be forgotten in an instant. Sugar-cookie classmates. Every last one of them.

There was a pause. It was somewhat awkward, but short lived.

The awkward moment died because the pink stuff between the little boy's ears sent certain signals to his mouth and tongue so that these sounds were created:

"Have you ever had a vision before?"

"Vision?"

"Oh sorry. My dad tells this to me every day: 'Son, you need to have a strong vision of what you're going to be.'" He thoughtfully rephrased the question, "So, have you ever wondered what you're going to be when you grow up?

"What I want to be when I grow up?" Makoto shook her head. "I haven't thought that far ahead."

"Well then, did you ever wonder why the sky is a light-blue, instead of a navy blue, or green, or purplish-yellow?

It was an odd question. Makoto replied, "No."

"Oh, so you're a bird watcher then?"

He didn't wait for an answer. "Hmm, well…" Makoto noticed his eyes flicked toward the left corner as the little boy accessed memories from the pink matter in his skull.

"I have two birds. One of them is yellowish-green and the other is bluish-white. They like to make a lot of noise, and they don't do so much because they're in a cage." He swiped his hand through his hair. It was his nervous twitch. "Do you have any pets?"

Makoto looked at the boy strangely. "I have two cats."

"Oh cats." His eyes locked onto the left corner. "Well, I also have a tortoise, an aquarium with seahorses, and a lizard." He paused. "My mom has allergies. Allergic to anything with fur, so Dad says we can't have anything furry." He paused again. "Cats would be pretty cool though. I've always wanted something soft to pet. Must be nice."

"Yeah, it is."

He smiled at her.

And Makoto smiled back at the strange little boy. He was certainly strange, but he didn't talk about schoolwork or her blown-up parents. This little boy wasn't out to throw sharp and pointy words at her heart. So she smiled back because it was a nice thing to do.

"So what's your name?" Makoto asked. She asked because that was a nice thing to do too.

The little boy grinned again out of embarrassment. He forgot to introduce himself.

"The name's Shinozaki."

"Mine's Makoto."

And that was her first boy-friend.

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Makoto eventually had a vision. It wasn't a vision of her future; no, it was just a vision of her new story. She picked up bits and pieces from her life, and lied about them. Thoughts and feelings and emotions overflowed, so her story now went like this:

Once upon a time there was a kingdom on the moon. There weren't any rabbits. There was a princess that lived on the moon. Her name was Serenity. Her mother was named Serenity too.

Princess Serenity didn't like school that much because it was boring. Her mother sent her two best advisers to help her. They were cats. Their names were Artemis and Luna.

Artemis was a boy. He was a white cat. Luna was a girl. She was a black cat.

They had crescent moons on their foreheads because they lived on the moon. These cats could talk.

Princess Serenity had a lot of friends too. Their names were Sailor Mars, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, and Sailor Jupiter. Princess Serenity also had a boy-friend.

And together, they had all sorts of adventures on the moon. They were superheroes. They fought for love and justice.


End file.
